


Riding In Cars With Boys

by starsandgutters



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fluff, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, Silly, this started out serious-ish and turned cracky very fast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-22
Updated: 2015-01-22
Packaged: 2018-03-08 14:11:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3212075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsandgutters/pseuds/starsandgutters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn’t buy a car with an automatic gear shift. He doesn’t, for two excellent reasons.</p><p>One: his brief stint as sales assistant of a Colorado Gas-n-Sip had only paid so much, and the only used car available with an automatic shift was a hideous deep-fuchsia color.</p><p>Two, and more important: the boys’ car has a manual shift.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Riding In Cars With Boys

**Author's Note:**

> I have no excuse for this other than trying to get out of writer's block, and the fact that driving bores me enough to send my mind wandering to certain characters that drive around _a lot_. Also, backseat driving is unbearable, so I feel Castiel's pain.
> 
> Unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine!

He doesn’t buy a car with an automatic gear shift. He doesn’t, for two excellent reasons.

One: his brief stint as sales assistant at a Colorado Gas-n-Sip had only paid so much, and the only used car available with an automatic shift was a hideous deep-fuchsia color.

Two, and more important: the boys’ car has a manual shift.

Castiel may not know much about cars -- he understands how they work, obviously, but in an abstract way, not in the hands-on fashion that is second nature to Dean -- but the Chevy Impala always was, and still remains, his paradigm of The Car.

To buy a modern, automatized model would have been -- Cas feels -- almost an insult to the Impala, and he can’t do that, not after all the times she has welcomed him inside her leather-scented sanctum.

Besides, Castiel thinks with a smile as he drives off -- a little warily -- in his newly purchased car, Dean is sure to prefer it that way, the gear stick solidly in place, the old-fashioned make and model. Dean likes driving classic cars, and Castiel will learn to do the same. It isn’t rocket science, after all, and he wants to be as proficient as he can, as fast as possible.

The first time he drives over to the bunker, his grand entrance is ruined by the car sputtering to a halt on a dusty back road. It all seems in order, and it never occurs to him to check the fuel levels. Later, he’s too embarrassed by the discovery of his mistake to demand to drive, and so Dean takes the driver’s seat and rolls the car out smoothly, cursing when it bounces heavily on its suspensions.

Castiel sits in the backseat and keeps a vigilant eye on Crowley, without complaint. After all, he knows that when he finally does get the chance to drive Dean around in this car, it will be worth it, just to show off his taste in wheels (as Dean would say) and his newly acquired skills. Yes, Dean will definitely be impressed.

* * *

 

“Goddammit, Cas.”

“You keep saying that. It’s not very polite, considering.”

“I’ll stop taking your dad’s name in vain when you stop driving like a _goddamn_ maniac.”

“My driving is perfectly adequate.”

“You just sped past a red light at an intersection.”

“There was no traffic!”

“No, right, just the _one_ eight-wheeler truck coming for us.”

“I calculated the odds. I knew I could make it by.”

Dean would rub a hand over his face, if he wasn’t too terrified to take his eyes off the road.

“Cas. You taught yourself to drive, and that’s great, okay, but come _on_ , man. I almost puked my way through that last stretch of curves, and I don’t even get carsick!”

Castiel’s head swivels towards Dean to face him fully, expression between bemused and irritated.

“I don’t understand why you and Hannah both had the same reaction. Surely if my driving was so brusque, then _I_ would get sick too--”

“The _road,_ dude! Eyes on the road!” Dean’s voice is just a smidgen more panicked than he’d like it to be.

Castiel, evidently alarmed by Dean’s yelp, turns to face the road again, his neck almost snapping with the speed. The car swerves in beautiful synchrony with Cas’s head-- to the left and directly into the opposite lane, causing Dean to grab on to the edge of seat, a moment of weakness which he’ll later deny.

Once they’ve taken the car back into the right lane, Castiel, having ascertained there’s no effective danger, seems to have turned the irritation switch up to 11. He starts turning towards Dean, then thinks better of it and only glares sideways at him.

“ _Really,_ Dean? You fight monsters on a daily basis and you’re going to white-knuckle your way through a car drive with me?”

Dean discreetly lets go of the seat.

“Gotta keep your eyes on the road, man,” he croaks, which is apparently the wrong thing to say, because Castiel is now sporting a bitchface that makes Dean wonder if he and Sam aren’t related after all.

“Dean Winchester. When have _you_ ever - _ever_ \- been known to keep your eyes on the road while talking to someone? Because _I_ have yet to witness it.”

“Yeah, except I’ve been driving for _years_ ,” Dean protests, forcing gruffness back into his voice, because _he’s_ the expert here, thank you very much.  “You’ve only just bought this… this thing,” he concludes lamely, because God knows the golden Chevy Cas picked out for himself is ass-ugly, but you do _not_ insult a man’s wheels.

“So yeah, you may be a fast learner, but I still have seniority over you on this. You gotta learn this suff by practice, not by… angelic super brain, or something like that,” Dean continues, feeling more confident and less in fear of dying by the second. “And I can tell you that when I was first learning how to drive, my dad rode my ass _hard._ ”

Castiel turns to face him again with slow deliberation (though, Dean notes, still keeping the rearview mirror in check), his mouth a firm, serious line, and Dean is very grateful that smiting is no longer an option between them. But Cas’s voice when he speaks is surprisingly calm.

“So what, Dean? Are you going to ride my ass hard?”

Dean’s face reaches critical temperature so fast he almost grabs the wheel and swerves the car into the opposite lane himself, just to create a distraction.

_What the hell._

Even if there was any chance that this had _not_ been an intentional jab on Cas’s part -- and Dean is aware that Cas is long past those levels of human interaction fail -- the aggressive eye contact would settle the matter.

He just got sex-punned by Cas. Possibly propositioned, even. It’s either mortifying or arousing.

 _Why not both,_ Dean’s reptile brain wonders, as he squirms in his seat slightly.

“Just-- just get us to Wisconsin, okay? Those werewolves aren’t gonna gank themselves,” he chokes out, trying to salvage what is left of the relative non-awkwardness they started the trip with. “And switch into fourth, can’t you hear you’re killing the engine? It’s practically wailing at you.”

“Figures,” Cas sighs, and for some reason it rubs Dean the wrong way.

“What?” Dean snaps, somewhere between irritated and guilty.

“I should have known you’d be all over this.”

“All over _what_?”

“Teaching me how to drive stick.”

There is nothing casual in the emphasis Castiel places on those words.

Not only did Cas just make another sex pun, he made a _terrible_ one, and they’re stuck in the car together.

This may just be hell, except with more awkward boners threatening to happen.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dean can see a small smirk hovering on Cas’s lips, and despite everything -- the crass puns and the very real danger of becoming roadkill in the near future -- he relaxes for the first time since they got into the car. Even the Mark’s throbbing seems to subside slightly, a dull itch on his arm, nothing more than background noise.

This little road trip could turn out to be fun, after all. And their overnight stop -- before they meet Sam in the small town he’d gone ahead to scope out -- might be even more interesting, if that smirk is anything to go by.

What they need, Dean decides, is some music. He reaches for the radio knob, hoping to find some station other than the gangsta rap ones that have been apparently memorized on _all_ the presets by the car’s previous owner, when Castiel takes a drastic swerve to the right, causing Dean’s head to _thump_ back painfully against the window.

“ _Cas!_ ”

“Apologies.”

“Apologies my _ass,_ why are you even going this fast?!”

“I just assumed this was the speed it was proper to maintain, Dean. You know, based on your example.”

Dean doesn’t buy the innocent tone for a moment, and he has the feeling he wasn’t really meant to, either.

He sighs with all the exasperation of a bone-weary man. “Just pull over, will you? I need to get some air. And then I’ll probably have to show you how to drive all over again.”

“How to drive stick, you mean?” Cas supplies helpfully.

“I’ll drive _your_ … stick,” Dean replies, in what is the crowning achievement of a lifetime of pathetic comebacks.

The awkward silence that follows that statement thankfully only lasts a few seconds.

“I’d like that,” says Castiel, and there’s humour in his smile, but also something softer, more genuine.

“Yeah,” Dean says, rolling down the window and resigning himself to listen to yet another Snoop Dogg song. “Yeah, I think I’d like that too.”


End file.
